Futurist Makes A Compelling Argument For Why We Should Bring Animals Back From Extinction

Last March, scientists met at a TEDx conference to discuss which
extinct animals would be good candidates to bring back from the
dead, called de-extinction.

One year later, futurist and environmentalist Stewart Brand
appeared on Tuesday at a Ted conference in Vancouver to present
the status of a few de-extinction projects.

At the paleogenomics lab at the University of California, Santa
Cruz, for example, lab leader Beth Shapiro and a young scientist,
Ben Novak, are trying to revive the first passenger pigeon by
altering the DNA of the sally band-tailed pigeon, the passenger's
closest genetic relative. A flock of band-tailed pigeons, Brand
said, "is being groomed to become the first surrogate parents of
passenger pigeons."

The passenger pigeon went
from numbering in the billions to being wiped out by the 19th
century.Keith
Schengili-Roberts

In another part of the world, Russian scientist Sergey Zimov has
created a preserve in Siberia called Pleistocene Park that
attempts to restore the type of grassland that existed when
woolly mammoths called that place home. Zimov hopes to eventually
re-introduce these hairy creatures to the environment.

While the thought of having herds of woolly mammoths running
around doesn't immediately sound like a great idea, Brand makes a
compelling case for why we should pursue the technique.

De-extinction is not just about reversing extinction, Brand says,
but about helping to prevent extinction. It "could help
revolutionize conservation," he said.

That's because de-extinction can be used to combat what's called
the "extinction vortex" — when animal populations fall,
inbreeding becomes more common and species go extinct by loss of
genetic variation. Endangered species like the black-footed
ferret could potentially be saved by introducing old genes into
current populations, Brand said.

Brand is the founder and former editor of the Whole Earth Catalog
and the co-founder of the Long Now Foundation, an institution that supports
projects that promote long-term thinking.